They had not followed
them. To be exact, they did not drive piles to hold the cribbings
for the piers. They did not go deep enough. They sank shafts, they
built coffer-dams, they put in piers over and over again. There was
forty feet of quicksand under all their work and of course it
slipped and sank."
Warburton slowly got up. He was growing purple in the face. His hair
seemed rising. He doubled a huge fist. "Over and over again!" he
roared, furiously. "Over and over again! Lodge, do you hear that?"
"Yes. Sounds kind of familiar to me," replied the chief, with one of
his rare smiles. He was beyond rage now. He saw the end. He alone,
perhaps, had realized the nature of that great work. And that smile
had been sad as well as triumphant.
Warburton stamped up and down the car aisle. Manifestly he wanted to
smash something or to take out his anger upon his comrades. That was
not the quick rage of a moment; it seemed the bursting into flame of
a smoldering fire. He used language more suited to one of Benton's
dance-halls than the private car of the directors of the Union
Pacific Railroad. Once he stooped over Lodge, pounded the table.
"Three hundred thousand dollars sunk in that quicksand hole!" he
thundered. "Over and over again! That's what galls me. Work done
over and over--unnecessary--worse than useless--all for dirty gold!
Not for the railroad, but for gold! .
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